LIVERPOOL may be selling their star man and replacing him with a whole host of new players from all over the world, but John Scales insists Brendan Rodgers will ensure they don't "do a Tottenham".

The Liverpool players will be expecting more squad additions after Luis Suarez was sold to Barcelona[GETTY]

With Luis Suarez arriving in Barcelona 12 months after Gareth Bale left White Hart Lane for Madrid, parallels have been drawn between the two clubs' summer transfer activities.

Unfortunately for Andre Villas-Boas, Tottenham's collection of seven new signings funded in the large part by Bale's enormous fee struggled to bed into the Premier League and he lost his job six months into what turned out to be a hugely disappointing season for the London club.

Those lessons have been learned at Anfield, though, according to Scales, an England centre-back who represented both Tottenham and Liverpool in the 1990s.

And although he concedes that ultimately both Bale and Suarez are technically "irreplaceable", in the medium term Liverpool will emerge the stronger from their own merry-go-round.

Liverpool just have to accept that Suarez is one of that handful of irreplaceable players

John Scales

Scales said: "Of course the similarities are that Liverpool have lost Suarez while 12 months ago Tottenham sold Gareth Bale. But those parallels will have been drawn at Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers will have seen the experience they suffered at Spurs.

"With the way the players were brought in by the director of football and the whole process of getting them to White Hart Lane, with hindsight it did not work well for Spurs.

"The players signed all bought into Andre Villas-Boas's philosophy but failed to hit the floor running. The next thing, AVB was sacked and the new players were all disillusioned.

"There were a specific set of circumstances at Tottenham but it is not just them - any club bringing in a lot of new players have the challenge of integrating them.

"But as a player it is so much easier to settle into a clearly defined system where everybody knows what they are doing and that is what Brendan Rodgers has got at Liverpool.

"Brendan knows that the personalities of the players are as important as their abilities.

"That said, nobody's personality is as important as his own. He has the strength of character to be able to bring new players into alignment with his current system and the back-up to help him do it.

"Rodgers enjoys a structure and organisation behind him that is much more stable than Villas-Boas had at Spurs. There was no clear alignment ever at White Hart Lane."

John Scales moved from Liverpool to Tottenham in 1996 [GETTY]

Scales also defended the decision by Rodgers to reinvest the Suarez windfall broadly on players such as Adam Lallana, Ricky Lambert, Emre Can and Lazar Markovic, rather than to try to find a multi-million-pound direct replacement for the Uruguay international.

"Every owner, fan or manager would want to go out and buy another star player, but you have got to get the balance right," Scales said. "There are financial fair play rules, budgetary constraints and even the philosophy of the club to think about it.

"Liverpool just have to accept that Suarez is one of that handful of irreplaceable players so it was going to be an impossible task. That must be taken for granted.

"It does not mean to say you can't get a young player who might blossom - and already at the club Raheem Stirling is a real talent. And Daniel Sturridge has been in great form and was able to play the lone striker very well when Suarez was missing at the start of last season.

"This season, Liverpool have got to have a squad to manage the intensity of the season, playing the Champions League as well as the Premier League.

"It bodes well that there still seems to be a great atmosphere at the club and a strong work ethic throughout a strong supporting cast who are used to playing a certain way."

Already the disappointment of missing out on the title on the final day of the season is dissolving on Merseyside but expectations will be all the greater for the coming campaign as a result of that near miss.

Scales does not mind the famous club regaining some of that desire to finish at the very top of the game provided it is tempered with a bit of realism.

"Winning the league has got to be an ambition," said Scales. "It was an incredible season last year but it's an evolving process and as a minimum they will want to be playing consistently in Europe while still qualifying for the Champions League again next year."